Linden Bark Borer Moth on a linden leaf. An introduced species… to go with our numerous introduced linden species. Linden’s are very popular street trees here. The flowers are just opening now.
European Paper Wasp, the one with the orange antennae.
One of the tiger crane flies.
Certain grassy and unkept parts of Green-Wood are carpeted with these small wolf spiders. Here’s one with an egg case.
A little jewel. There are hundreds of these blue and green wasp species in the Chrysididae family. They’re cuckoo wasps, meaning they lay their eggs in the nests of other species.
The Odonates are finally flying. Saw six species the other day in Green-Wood. One or two of each.
Which means the exuviae of dragonfly and damselfly larval, which live in the water, are now visible.
Two-spotted Cobweb spider. The variety of spiders continues to astonish me. And challenge me re: photographing them. There are observations of 73 species of spider in Kings County NY (i.e. Brooklyn) in iNaturalist. This is the first NYC record for this one, spotted on racing across a stone step.
A reminder that somebody is eating these things… and it’s not me.
Common Grackle with a bill full of something… not ants, anyway. Presumably taking to feed the young ones.
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This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Backyard and Beyond 
Great bugs! Found a spider about a week ago. Had to look at 400 to 500 photos to ID a wood louse hunter spider. Birds are lits eadier than bugs!
There’s a reason scientists ID them with pinned specimens, and magnification…